11:22am: In an update to his blog post, Goessling has quotes from GM Mike Rizzo on the move. Rizzo explains that it was necessary to DFA Chico in order to put him in the minors because he was on the major league squad for just one day. He added that there is zero risk of the club losing the 26-year-old.
10:30am: The Nationals have designated pitcher Matt Chico for assignment, though he will soon return to the club's 40-man roster, writes Ben Goessling of MASNSports.com. The move is concurrent with Washington's purchase of Doug Slaten's contract from Triple-A Syracuse.
Chico, 26, made his first big league appearance in nearly two years when he got the start against the Marlins yesterday. In five innings, Chico allowed two runs, registered three strikeouts, and didn't walk any batters.
Slaten has been golden in 17 Triple-A innings this season. The 30-year-old has not allowed a single run while racking up 17 strikeouts with just one walk. In 126 career big league outings, the lefty has a 3.68 ERA with 6.1 K/9 and 3.5 BB/9.
Goessling adds that he is unsure as to why Chico is being DFA'd only to be retained. Nats GM Mike Rizzo is scheduled to give a more detailed explanation of the move later this morning.
DFAing an ex-Dback for another ex-Dback.
Watch out Nats fans, Slaten’s coming to town. Duck.
If I had to guess, Chico has to be DFA’ed for the purpose of securing option waivers, which means even though he has options left, he has enough service time to require being exposed to waivers each time he is optioned to the minors. He remains on the 40-man roster while he passes through waivers, which is weird since usually when someone is DFA’ed, they are removed from the 40-man roster. Obviously, if Chico is claimed, he goes to whatever team claims him. But if he passes through waivers, he will simply be optioned to Syracuse, and remain on the Nats’ 40-man roster.
This happened with Dana Eveland last July in Oakland; there was a press release about it at the time, and I got some clarification from the VERY nice people in their media relations department. Here’s a link to the press release:
http://oakland.athletics.mlb.com/news/press_releases/press_release.jsp?ymd=20090708&content_id=5754502&vkey=pr_oak&fext=.jsp&c_id=oak